Faculty - The

Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Shawn Hatosy, and Usher Raymond. Teachers/Aliens:

Some professors now use AI as a teaching tool. They ask students to have ChatGPT write a bad essay, then critique it. They use AI to generate personalized math problems. The fear of obsolescence is being replaced by a grudging collaboration. The Faculty

The film is notable for its "cool 90s" ensemble cast, many of whom went on to major stardom: Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall,

At its core, The Faculty is a metaphor for the teenage experience. High school often feels like an alien environment where authority figures demand total submission. The film literalizes this by having parasites take over the bodies of the teachers, turning them into a hive mind that values "fitting in" above all else. They use AI to generate personalized math problems

This moral injury—knowing you are lowering the bar to keep your job—is destroying faculty morale. The Faculty wants to challenge students. The system punishes them for it.

For a teenager, there is nothing more terrifying than the realization that the adults in charge—the faculty—might not actually have their best interests at heart. The film literalizes the teenage feeling that teachers are mindless drones enforcing arbitrary rules. When the drama teacher (a brilliantly over-the-top Piper Laurie) screams, "I’m so disappointed in you!" before sprouting tentacles, it resonates because it is a nightmare version of a parent-teacher conference. The aliens aren’t just taking over the world; they are co-opting authority, turning the structure of the school into a mechanism for assimilation.

But watch his arc closely. Zeke doesn’t rejoin the group. He doesn’t get the girl. He doesn’t walk the graduation aisle. In the film’s final, haunting image, Zeke is seen alone in the distance, walking away from the school, still an outsider. He saved them all, and he is still not one of them.